Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Taming of Wild Animals

The play is peppered with metaphors involving the taming
of wild animals. In the case of the courtship between Beatrice and
Benedick, the symbol of a tamed savage animal represents the social
taming that must occur for both wild souls to be ready to submit
themselves to the shackles of love and marriage. Beatrice’s vow
to submit to Benedick’s love by “[t]aming my wild heart to thy loving
hand” makes use of terms from falconry, suggesting that Benedick
is to become Beatrice’s master (III.i.113).
In the opening act, Claudio and Don Pedro tease Benedick about his
aversion to marriage, comparing him to a wild animal. Don Pedro
quotes a common adage, “‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke,’”
meaning that in time even the savage Benedick will surrender to
the taming of love and marriage (I.i.213).
Benedick mocks this sentiment, professing that he will never submit
to the will of a woman. At the very end, when Benedick and Beatrice
agree to marry, Claudio pokes fun at Benedick’s mortified countenance,
suggesting that Benedick is reluctant to marry because he remembers
the allusion to tamed bulls:

Tush, fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns
with gold, And all Europa shall rejoice at theeAs once Europa did at lusty JoveWhen he would play the noble beast in love. (V.iv.44–47)

Claudio changes Benedick from a laboring farm
animal, a bull straining under a yoke, to a wild god, empowered
by his bestial form to take sexual possession of his lady. While
the bull of marriage is the sadly yoked, formerly savage creature,
the bull that Claudio refers to comes from the classical myth in
which Zeus took the form of a bull and carried off the mortal woman
Europa. This second bull is supposed to represent the other side
of the coin: the bull of bestial male sexuality.

War

Throughout the play, images of war frequently symbolize
verbal arguments and confrontations. At the beginning of the play, Leonato
relates to the other characters that there is a “merry war” between
Beatrice and Benedick: “They never meet but there’s a skirmish of
wit between them” (I.i.50–51). Beatrice carries
on this martial imagery, describing how, when she won the last duel
with Benedick, “four of his five wits went halting off” (I.i.53).
When Benedick arrives, their witty exchange resembles the blows
and parries of a well-executed fencing match. Leonato accuses Claudio
of killing Hero with words: “Thy slander hath gone through and through
her heart” (V.i.68). Later in the same scene,
Benedick presents Claudio with a violent verbal challenge: to duel
to the death over Hero’s honor. When Borachio confesses to staging
the loss of Hero’s innocence, Don Pedro describes this spoken evidence
as a sword that tears through Claudio’s heart: “Runs not this speech
like iron through your blood?” (V.i.227),
and Claudio responds that he has already figuratively committed
suicide upon hearing these words: “I have drunk poison whiles he
uttered it” (V.i.228).

Hero’s Death

Claudio’s powerful words accusing Hero of unchaste and
disloyal acts cause her to fall down in apparent lifelessness. Leonato
accentuates the direness of Hero’s state, pushing her further into
seeming death by renouncing her, “Hence from her, let her die” (IV.i.153). When
Friar Francis, Hero, and Beatrice convince Leonato of his daughter’s
innocence, they maintain that she really has died, in order to punish
Claudio and give Hero a respectable amount of time to regain her
honor, which, although not lost, has been publicly savaged. Claudio
performs all the actions of mourning Hero, paying a choir to sing
a dirge at her tomb. In a symbolic sense, Hero has died, since,
although she is pure, Claudio’s damning accusation has permanently
besmirched her name. She must symbolically die and be reborn pure
again in order for Claudio to marry her a second time. Hero’s false death
is less a charade aimed to induce remorse in Claudio than it is
a social ritual designed to cleanse her name and person of infamy.